She’s one of my best friends. She’s great.” She pauses a beat. “Her specialty is child psychology, but she sees Logan as a favor to me.”
“Right,” I muse, my mind working.
“Mama!” Katie cries, and Lucy inhales a sharp breath, her eyes drifting shut.
“I love you, baby girl, but Mama just needs ten minutes.” Her voice is sweet, but her teeth gnawed together as she says it reveals something else.
“Do you want me to take her for a bit?” I offer.
“Are you serious?” She almost cries. “Mia, I would love you forever.”
“I don’t mind,” I say, picking up the little girl from the box. She stops crying instantly. “Benny and I were about to get ice cream. Can she—”
“Anything she wants,” Lucy cuts in.
I giggle. “We’ll be back in half an hour?”
“You are saving my life and my business and my sanity.”
The ice cream store is only a few doors down. Benny gets something blue, and I get plain vanilla for Katie. While carrying her, I hold the cone to her mouth and let her go crazy. With no free hands, Benny holds on to the strap of my bag. As soon as we step back out, I realize where we are. It was dark the last time I was here, and I never noticed what was around. Across the road is a white building with a tall steeple and the steps I sat on when everything changed. I expect the panic to begin, the trigger to set off, but nothing happens. I look at the church again, the stairs. I’m positive it’s the same one. Yet, there’s no visceral reaction to seeing it. “Come on,” I mutter. “Make sure you walk with Mama, okay?”
We cross the road, and it’s nothing like New York, where we have to look twice before crossing, even at the lights. Benny skips the entire way to the church steps, and we sit side by side with Katie on my lap.
“Princess has ice cream all on her chin!” Benny giggles, and I look at Katie, her blue eyes wide as she parts her lips to devour the treat.
I pull out wipes from my bag and wipe her clean.
A second later, she’s back at it.
Benny laughs harder. “She’s so cute.”
“You know Katie’s your family, right?”
Benny freezes mid-lick and eyes me, confused.
“Lucy—Katie’s mom—is your dad’s sister.”
“You mean Leo’s sister?”
“Yes.” I smile. “That makes Katie your cousin.”
“Cousin,” he repeats. “Do I have other cousins?”
“No, just Katie.” Although, with Holden being as promiscuous as he is, I do have to wonder.
We sit in silence, Katie breaking through every couple of minutes to demand more ice cream, and I wait. I wait for my lungs to shrink, for my throat to close in and my heart to race so hard and fast that I expect it to burst right out of my chest. I wait for my skin to crawl, my veins to fill with nothing but panic and restlessness. I wait, and I wait.
It never comes.
I feel… free. Like I can breathe. From the moment Leo showed up at the barn six months ago, I’d been living my life in limbo, not knowing how to feel or what to do next. Everything was in question, and it still is, but… at least I can breathe through all the uncertainty. I look up at the steeple, the sun blasting right behind the cross, and my lips tick. I haven’t stepped foot in a church since Papa died because… because I stopped believing in faith. How could faith exist when it rips away the most important parts of my soul, fills the empty spaces left behind with dirty, filthy ugliness?
But it didn’t.
Faith filled my emptiness with Bennett.
Blessed Bennett.
The church doors open, and a beautiful, black middle-aged woman appears, dressed in dark gray with a white priest collar. Her smile is soft as she makes her way down the steps. “Good morning, babies,” she says to the kids, then looks pointedly at me. “Are you new in town, sweetheart?”
“We’re visiting my Leo,” Benny tells her.
“Your Leo?” she asks.
I wish for Benny to say “my dad,” but he just nods in response.
“I thought you might be here about the school program,” she says, walking past us.
“School program?” I call out.
She turns back to us. “For your little boy.” She grins at Benny. “He’d be about ready to start, right?”
“Next year.” I nod.
“Well, if you do decide to stay for whatever reason, we have a completely optional program with the elementary school for those little